By Kayode Emola
For many millennia, humanity has chased one goal, ‘the pursuit of happiness’. Few really find happiness, and for those who find it, it is priceless and not quantifiable by any monetary value. However, countless people are bound in chains, some literally and some metaphorically.
For those who are bound, they would do anything to be free, but freedom is relative. It depends on what we hold dear to us and how we or others perceive the freedom we crave. When African countries were demanding their freedom from the European colonial masters after the Second World War, many of them were hopeful for a better country.
Some of the freedom fighters then imagined a world where fellow citizens would live as kings and princes or perhaps as Freeborn’s. Today, that freedom seems like an illusion; Africa really looks like anything but a free continent. If anything, it feels like the lives of many of our people are worse now than when Africa was being colonised.
Today, Africa is like an entangled mess, with no thoughtful leadership, save for a few countries like Burkina Faso, where the leader is driving real development for its people. When he first came to power, the Burkina Faso President ordered the French troops out of his country. A move so bold, no one would have imagined it a few years earlier. That daring move and other developmental programmes enacted finally seem like one country out of many countries in Africa is finally beginning to understand what true freedom means.
For us Yoruba, our fate is not dissimilar to the many wounded African nations. The core Yoruba country is a fragment of what it used to be. Some are in the Republic of Benin, and most of us are stuck in Nigeria with other tribes. For want of a better word, we look like we would be better anywhere else than in Nigeria.
Having witnessed the brutality of the Buhari second rule of Nigeria and the mayhem unleashed by his Fulani tribesmen on every other nationality, it is safe to say that the last thing on any decent Yoruba person is the unity of Nigeria.
For far too long, the ‘One Nigeria’ project was sold as if it’s a gospel. It was forced down the throat of every indigenous nationality that makes up Nigeria as if to say, other than this bread, there is no other meal. Whereas even a wounded wife has a way of escape from a bad marriage, but the millions of people trapped in Nigeria are just held hostage against our will.
Many of us joined the struggle for the emancipation of the millions of our people trapped in sub-human living conditions in Nigeria. Hoping to change the lives of our people with the best of our abilities. Many of us lost our resources, time, assets, and other valuable items. Some others paid with their very own lives, yet the nation for which we struggle seems like an impossible task to achieve.
For those who didn’t even join or understand the struggle, they have already paid a price far beyond what the human mind can comprehend. However, for those who joined, understood the struggle, and then turned back, they have paid a much steeper price for their cowardly act.
Freedom is not given; it is taken. That is why when the Europeans left Africa in the twentieth century, it wasn’t for our own good. It was a strategic play to make sure we were never free. They ensured that we got and till this day, continue to get the most corrupt of leaders, such that we wish they never left.
For the next generation of Africans to know or taste any element of freedom, a handful of people of understanding must design a true path of freedom for the African race. They must be prepared to sacrifice their all, even their life for the true emancipation of the African race.
That would be a silver lining of hope, and the price of that task is not something I can begin to comprehend. I just hope and pray that someone will not wake up, ready to undertake the task and see that the true cost is far beyond what any man is willing to pay. After all, Muamar Gaddafi tried it once, and he paid with his life.
Countless African heroes before him had also tried and failed, but it doesn’t mean that it is not possible. For if we look at the true cost of freedom, we may never even begin the journey to our liberation. Africa must be free, but the question is: are there patriots who would damn the true cost of freedom and do whatever they can to pursue true freedom and happiness for the next generations?
